A system and apparatus for conveying and handling small livestock is described inter alia in U.S. Pat. No. 3,797,460 and British Patent Specification Nos. 2050309 and 2049401.
In all of these systems containers are provided for transporting small livestock from the remote locations such as farms to a central processing plant. Each container is itself divided into a number of sections either by partitions or drawers or both and at the processing station the small livestock are removed from the compartments within the containers and placed on an overhead conveyor for electrocution or the like ready to be plucked and prepared either as oven-ready poultry or ready for freezing. The containers are washed and sterilised and made ready for collection and reuse.
The systems described in the U.S. and British patent specifications all demonstrate a principle known from other spheres of life, namely that it is more economical for a single transporter to carry a large number of individual loads on a single circular route than for each individual supplier to deliver livestock or other units of produce independently and separately.
The handling system relies on a distribution by lorry of containers to outlaying farms to enable the farmhands to load into the containers livestock ready to be slaughtered and processed. The same or a different lorry can then collect the filled containers and move them to the processing plant where as described above they can be unloaded and reprocessed for a repeat journey.
In the system described in the American patent specification, the containers include individual compartments which are closed off by means of gates. Access to the compartments is through the open ends exposed when the gates are swung open and livestock can only be loaded into the compartments through these open ends and can only be unloaded therefrom by reverse process and a degree of mechanisation to assist in the unloading of livestock is illustrated.
In the case of the system and apparatus described in the two British patent specifications referred to, drawers and compartments are illustrated which although can be withdrawn for the purpose of loading and unloading the livestock, are not normally separated from the containers.
In both systems the transfer of the poultry to the operatives at the slaughter house is direct from the container and as a consequence the layer to the receiving section of the processing plant and the handling of the birds at the reception section within the plant is not as convenient as it might be. In particular, in the system described in the two British specifications, only one operative can unload from one side of each container at a time although there are possibly up to eight compartments to be unloaded and this inevitably slows down the handling capability of the system.
In the United States system the livestock are all dumped onto a conveyor and this can sometimes result in the birds either becoming damaged or damaging one another in their excitement and panic and it is not unknown for birds to attempt to fly up as a result of the sudden discharge of the container onto the conveyor.